Black People Are 3 Times More Likely To Drink Moscato Than Other Wine

The wine of the moment — well, the past few years, actually — has been moscato. And its rise has been astronomical. “I’ve been following the wine category for over 10 years,” says Danny Brager, the senior vice president of beverage/alcohol practice at Nielsen. “Frankly, I haven’t seen anything like it at all.” Nielsen doesn’t just track TV; Brager’s group follows retail wine sales. According to Brager, the number of moscato brands has doubled in the past three years — and it’s not over yet. Sales of moscato will keep growing, he says, at about 25 percent a year.

But almost all of the big press about moscato and its newfound fame seem to forget one thing about the wine and its consumers: race. Brager says one would typically describe the average wine drinker as older, white and upper-income, and they are equally split by gender. Not so with moscato drinkers. “Much more African-American,” says Brager. “Much more Hispanic, much younger, much lower-income, much more female.”

Brager says African-Americans are three times more likely to drink moscato than some other table wine. That’s believable, especially if you listen to hip-hop. As long I can remember, some rapper has been name-dropping some type of alcohol in his or her song. For a while it was the champagne Cristal. I distinctly remember the liqueur Hypnotiq being big when I was in college, and ciroc vodka is trending a bit right now. But moscato has trumped them all.

Lil’ Kim is believed to have first rapped about it in 2005: “Still over in Brazil sippin’ moscato, ya must have forgot though, so I’mma take you back to the block yo.” But Drake gets most of the credit for putting moscato on the map, in a song from a 2009 mixtape. The lyrics include the line: “It’s a celebration — clap clap bravo. Lobster and shrimp and a glass of moscato.”

After that, it became a hip-hop staple, name-dropped everywhere. Most recently, the wine was featured prominently in the chorus of a Waka Flocka Flame song (“I’mma sip moscato, and you gon’ lose them pants”), as well as in one featuring Kendrick Lamar. Moscato even found its way into the world of reality TV. For a while, NeNe Leakes of the Real Housewives of Atlanta was pushing her own brand, Miss Moscato. It’s unclear how moscato got so big with hip-hop — and black people — so quickly.

At the San Antonio Winery in Los Angeles one sunny Sunday afternoon, I found dozens of these moscato wine converts, like Quintasha Scorza. Scorza first sampled moscato while she was working at an Olive Garden restaurant. After that, she was hooked. She was at the winery with a group of girlfriends — all black — celebrating one of their birthdays. All of the women in the group — and many of the people in the winery — were drinking wines like moscato. The wine drinkers are young; they’re Latino, or black or Asian. And a lot of them are pretty new to this: Moscato is their gateway wine.

But people who like moscato really don’t care. Moscato drinkers are loyal to their brand — so loyal that beverage makers are flooding the market with various moscato spin-offs. Beer and moscato-mixed drink recipes. Nicki Minaj-endorsed coconut moscato. Moscato-infused vodka? Yeah. That exists. Riboli may be on to something: There is nothing wrong with sweet potato pie. Soon, there’ll be a slice of it for everyone.